It’s been a VERY busy weekend in Disney World.
Marathon Weekend Crowds in 2023
Although the holiday crowds are mostly gone, this weekend is also the Walt Disney World Marathon Weekend, which brings THOUSANDS of runners to the parks and resorts. This is a HUGE event, and it usually impacts everything around Disney World, including traffic and, as of January 7th, the virtual queue system.
So this is how the virtual queue works: first, you sign up for it through the My Disney Experience app. You can do this at two points of the day — 7AM and 1PM. You’ll be assigned a group number, which will then be called so you can board the ride. Once your boarding group is called, you have one hour to scan into the ride and enter the attraction.
Except that’s changed today. On January 7th, we signed up for the Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind virtual queue in EPCOT. When our boarding group was called at 11:32AM, the app notified us that we had TWO hours, until 1:32PM to scan into the ride.
©Disney
Our best guess is that this is because of the crowds at the park due to the race. We have previously had problems navigating the parks on race days, and we’ve had situations where we had to rush to get to our virtual queue boarding time ON time when we only had an hour to arrive. This seems to be a new thing Disney World is doing to give those with boarding groups extra time when the parks are busy, and traffic may be heavier than normal.
Cosmic Rewind
It’s not clear if this is a temporary change or how long that two-hour return window will stick around, but we’ll keep our eyes out for additional updates.
©Disney
We’ll also look out for any other changes in Disney World — and don’t forget, a TON of BIG changes are coming on January 9th — so stay tuned to DFB for more.
Big Changes in Disney World in 2024
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Hello, I went on December 14 and the wait time for the guardians queue was almost 4 hours.